U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Janak Joshi
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Michael Bennet
(D) Phil Weiser
60%↑
50%↓
Att. General
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(D) Jena Griswold
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) David Seligman
50%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) J. Danielson
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%↓
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(D) Jeff Bridges
(R) Kevin Grantham
40%
40%
30%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(D) Milat Kiros
90%
10%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(R) H. Scheppelman
(D) Alex Kelloff
70%
30%
10%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Trisha Calvarese
(D) Eileen Laubacher
90%
20%
20%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Jessica Killin
70%
30%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Manny Rutinel
(D) Shannon Bird
45%↓
30%
30%
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 27, 2010 08:40 PM UTC
16 Comments
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I read this book by a German psychoanalyst, Alice Miller, who analyzed Hitler and his childhood and why he become the monster he was. But what I walked away from after reading that book was that a million people followed Hitler and were just as heinous. She laid it all on the child rearing practices of the time – which basically said you have to separate a child from their feelings early on – before three years old. One practice was taking a child to view a dead body so that they would be desensitized to death.
So how does this relate? I am more concerned with the millions of people who follow and believe what Fox news puts out there. These people are emotionally disturbed and have been brain washed. They follow because their early childhood lives have been compromised through child abuse. There is no hope for them. Much like Hitler’s followers these people will do whatever their leaders tell them to do. Others in society (the healthy ones) must step up efforts to stop this behavior and continue to shine a light not only on how destructive it is but how if left unchecked will be our demise.
It’s Hitler Day at Pols again?
How do you imagine we achieve electoral power, assuming that all FOX News viewers–or more broadly those you do not agree with or understand–are without hope?
Yes, invoking Hitler is the oldest and most played out trick in the political book, but there is a correlation here beyond the superficial name calling.
Whether it stems from child abuse, low interest in politics, or low intellect…the millions of people who listen to and believe the Fox News opinions have something misfiring upstairs. These people don’t just have a political view that is different from rational people, they are (hate to say this but…) brainwashed.
Obviously my views may be a bit extreme, but nonetheless this is a HUGE problem for middle of the road and left leaning Americans. Listening to Obama’s speech last night, he can’t even get Republican’s to applaud when he talks about tax cuts for businesses, nuclear power, and offshore drilling. The right wing has no ideology, they just want to defeat whatever the Democrats are trying to do even if it is “conservative.”
I don’t know if you were being sarcastic with your question, but it is a valid point. Unfortunately, I believe that the core Fox viewers ARE without hope. That is okay though because there are always extremes in politics, that is nothing new. The part that worries me are the apathetic people who listen to Fox and don’t know that they are being spoon fed far-right ideology. However, I do not know the simple answer to get those people back to win elections (and public opinion)
from the religious right.
(although some of Geraldo’s Haiti coverage was decent) but merely pointing out that disparaging (and dismissing) them all, in broad sweeping generalities, as being raised like Hitler, or imagining that they were raised in any particular way (with no basis for that generality, but based merely on the fact that they–presumably–believe the crap pushed by FNC), is misguided. And its not a good strategy, as far as winning elections go.
I believe that in addition to the right-left divide that gets all the attention, there is an increasing populism v. corporatism divide–and that neither party is winning voter confidence there. Until one or another party embraces the people over corporations, voters will lurch back and forth–tossing out one party then the other as their only real means of expressing displeasure. Failing to understand that dynamic and divide–residing in Fox viewers and disgruntled leftists alike–is simply poor electoral strategy, IMO.
but I don’t think I was speaking in generalities. I definitely didn’t mean to, but it’s hard to write about something in 3 paragraphs and address all of the nuances.
I wrote a diary last week talking about the need for 3rd and 4th parties to step up. Reading Sharon’s diary today it’s obvious that progressives aren’t happy with Dems, Tea Partiers aren’t happy with Conservatives and independents aren’t happy with anyone.
I think the better choice over:
…is to have 3rd and 4th parties emerge. The timing is better now than it has been in generations IMO.
How do we work with those who are not in their right minds? We all know them; it’s about 30% of the population who we will never reach. Good luck trying Club Twitty.
Because of the way these people were brought up I truly believe there is no hope for them. It’s just my opinion and I am not an expert.
What if Fox News is the greatest gift to Progressives, since, well, the Progressive Movement itself?
Since the mid-50s, America has been a so-called Eisenhower “center-right nation” because Bill Buckley convinced this fringe element of his party to STFU and allow “liberal Republicans” and New Deal apostates to stand publicly as THE Republican Party. This got us a “reformed” Nixon, Rockefeller Republicans, Reagan Republicrats, and the Bush Dynasty. Thanks, for that last one, by the way, Mr. Buckley?!
What Bill Buckley hath joined, Fox has separated, perhaps irreparably, for the foreseeable future, and all in the name of the Republican’s almighty deity, Mammon. The likelihood that a unified, “center-right” Republican Party will be able to hold it’s head up and gain any traction in 2010, or 2012 for that matter, is about nil; almost exactly the likelihood that a Fox-driven Tea Party is going to sweep the country. Gerrymandering (and/or sloppy campaign work on the Progressive side) may allow a few pick-offs, but IF America truly is a center-right nation, Republicans must, quite literally, get over themselves before they’re able to appeal to voters in numbers large enough to take the House, the Senate, or the White House.
Progressives may find the vitriol on Fox to be obnoxious, and wonder, just how anyone who’s paying attention can swallow it (I suspect cheap beer and Prozac helps, A LOT!), but I’ll get worried about it all when Fox and Friends can put together a coalition that can win more than a few blips on the political landscape. Who, but Fox and the MSM chasing after Fox’s ratings share, is saying anything to prove that such a coalition exists?
Fox may be a “Dream to some” on the Right, but it’s only so for about 25-30% of them. For the other 21-26% Republicans need–mostly the small “c” conservative business owning middle class–, Fox remains the proverbial “nightmare to others.”
n/t
and you may be correct. One thing you are right about, even if you didn’t explicitly state it, is how Fox News (which I lump Rush Limbaugh into) is driving away minorities. Minus the Cubans in South Florida, the racist diatribes of the conservative commentators has pushed otherwise socially conservative minorities into the arms of the Democrats.
As much as I’d like to believe that Fox News is seperating the GOP, I don’t think that is happening. I think by virtue of it’s high ratings, it is pushing our apathetic majority to the right and building their party. The part that is particularly effective, even if their GOTV isn’t great, is how they control the message. Something like 70% of Americans wanted major reform/single payor before Fox News did their spinning magic. They were able to convince poor Southerners with no health care that gov’t run health care was a bad thing. That is pretty amazing in my eyes and if Democrats have half the brains of Republicans, they should be able to figure out how to get their message out better.
In a world where some have the Fox grounded worldview and everyone else has the “center-left” media worldview, it is hard for a conservative politician to craft a message that makes sense to both.
But, in the age of the Internet, you will be caught out if you try to tell one message to one set of people and something else to others. It is possible to bury two messages in one statement (the so called “dog whistle”), but it isn’t easy to pull off.
Republican Party voters registration and voter identification relative to Democrats is as low as it has been for decades.
Democrats have turned Colorado blue in the state capital and Congressional delegation. Democrats have the biggest majorities in Congress that they have had since the Civil Rights movement and a left of center Democratic President to boot.
Conservative Democrats are a much smaller share of the Democratic Party’s legislative caucus in Washington D.C. than they were in the 1980s. Arlen Specter changed parties to avoid near certain defeat under a GOP brand.
So, how can Fox be so uninfluential? Because their ratings edge is a statistical fluke.
The main reason that Fox has such a large audience is because it has a lock on the biased conservative TV journalism market. The purporting to be even handed TV journalism market, in contrast, has several players (three networks and CNN, for instance) who split their market share, but collectively have a bigger audience than Fox.
Also, the “apathetic majority” while a majority of adults, is not a majority of voters. They are less likely to vote than other TV News audiences and the apathetic middle is also not consistent or uniform in casting its vote, so their political impact is more dilute.
but how do you explain the low polling numbers for Obama, Healthcare, and wrong track/right track (and also the Massachusetts Senate race) even when Dems have done a decent job of digging us out of the hole that Republicans made? Obviously politics is cyclical, but Republicans were able to hold a majority in both houses of congress for 18 years while the Dems are looking at losing theirs after just 4 years.
Your last paragraph is interesting. Do you have stats on the likelihood of Fox watchers to vote vs. other networks? I would also debate your assertion that the apathetic majority doesn’t make up the majority of voters, but I don’t have stats to prove that (hard to quantify apathetic).
first year. Many Presidents have polled far worse and Obama polls better than Congress. This is another sign that the constant Fox tirade against Obama is only preaching to an already converted choice, not having a major influence on public opinion.
On healthcare, what will matter is what people think when a bill is passed. Uncertainty about what the final bill will look like, and doubt about the state of the nation, are conspiring to create doubt. Legislation, sausage and all that. Also, just as the Bernanke reappointment no vote was split pretty evenly between those thinking he’d done too little and those thinking he’d done too much, I think that concern about Health Care Reform is significant at both extremes.
On the MA election, the exit polling indicates that the decision had more to do with the individuals in the race than it did with sending a message on anything. Health care reform was not a major factor in the decisions people made in that election. Another very important factor was a much lower turnout by non-college educated African Americans and Hispanics than in ’08. I’d certainly be willing to be that Fox has a below average adult MA resident market share relative to the rest of the country.
A high wrong track (v. right track) number makes sense when ordinary Americans are still experiencing the impacts of the worst recession since World War II, which was irrevocably in progress before Obama took office. Unemployment, the most important measure for ordinary people, is a lagging indicator. These numbers track the economy, not the media.
The Dems aren’t realistically anywhere close to losing their majority. The are more GOP retirements than Democratic party retiremennts this cycle despite the fact that the GOP is starting out from a smaller number of seats, and at this stage the competive races aren’t clearly favoring one side or the other in the polls (and ten months is an eternity in politics, no one will remember the SOTU in November). The party in power almost always loses seats in an off-year election, but there is reason to believe that Dems will loss ten seats in 2010 in the Senate, or lose their House majority this time around. In 2012, reapportionment will be the biggest shake up factor, Obama will be bringing his magic to the campaign, and the economic slump will probably be in the past.
The apathetic majority comment is in response to the third paragraph of the original diary.
One fair operational definition of apathetic majority is adults who are eligible to vote, but don’t vote consistently in off year elections. Another would be people who are not affiliated with any political party (which is a plurality).
The political science literature about both groups is consistent and long standing. Both groups have below average voter turnout. The core 35% or so of eligible voters who vote in every election tend to be newspaper readers (and hence aren’t confined by a Fox News information bubble), are disproportionately likely to have a political party affiliation, and disproportionately likely to have other forms of civic and political engagement.
I suspect that all adults who rely primarily on TV news for information, regardless of their network preferences, are disproportionatley part of the apathetic majority. I don’t know if Fox is exceptional on this regard (although the original diary suggests that this could be true).
One concern in the original post is concerned that Fox sways in a negative way, apathetic majority members who watch it. To the extent that this is a concern, it isn’t a big one, because the apathetic majority has a pretty attunated political influence.